Artistic Ubud

Lempad was truly a twentieth-century Renaissance man: although he is best known for his magnificent works on paper, in the Puri Lukisan Museum and the Neka Art Museum, he was active in all the plastic arts, including sculpture and architecture. Lempad was born in the village of Bedulu, Gianyar, in the early 1860s. In the late nineteenth century, he came with his father to live in Ubud, where he stayed for the rest of his very long life. Most of the principal monuments of central Ubud, including the impressive, soaring temple gates which symbolize the city for many visitors, were designed by Lempad. He was a versatile and prolific sculptor, emphasizing monumentality of form over ornamentation, working in both wood and stone.When he was in his sixties, Lempad began applying the bold, volume-defining lines of his three-dimensional works to his drawings on paper. Later, he enlivened his drawings with gold and red pigment, to highlight features such as the mystical flames and contours of costume that distinguish his rendering of wayang-style figures. One of the greatest treasures of the Neka Art Museum is a series of ten drawings by Lempad illustrating the Brayut folk tale, which was originally in the collection of his friend Walter Spies, who entrusted them to a friend in Batavia (the old name for Jakarta) when he was arrested. In 1984, the drawings were presented to the Neka Art Museum, where they are on permanent display.

Lempad's death, in 1978, was a solemn moment of transition for Ubud and all Bali. Legend has it that the great man chose his time of dying, at the age of at least 116, selecting the most auspicious day of the Balinese calendar for his passing. He called his family and friends to his side and asked them to bathe him and dress him in white; after expressing his last wishes and saying farewell, he gently expired. He left behind an overwhelming legacy, reflected in the work of his many students and followers, including such fine artists as Ida Bagus Made Poleng, Tjkorde Oka Gambir, Anak Agung Sobrat, and Anak Gede Mregeng. Twenty years ago, it was probably true to say that the influence of Spies, Bonnet, and other Western artists might was being exaggerated; but even taking into account the defining significance of Balinese attitudes toward life and landscape in the island's art, as epitomized in the life and work of Lempad, it is nonetheless true to say that Balinese painting, as a school of art, was radically transformed by the thought and example of the foreign visitors.

Spies and Bonnet tried not to influence their Balinese students – Bonnet, it is said, concealed his own work before his students came to his studio for class. Nonetheless, Balinese artists absorbed the European influence with amazing rapidity, and soon evolved a panoply of new styles, complex and highly original. By the time World War Two came to Indonesia, the Pita Maha association and the Western artists involved with it had declined rapidly.
The story of Walter Spies after the outbreak of war is a sad one. The Dutch authorities, scandalized at what they regarded as a general moral laxity in Ubud, and as part of a crackdown on homosexuals throughout the colony, arrested Spies on New Year's Eve, 1938, for "indecent behavior" with a minor boy. According to his biographer, Hans Rhodius, the Balinese were shocked and puzzled by the arrest, and brought Spies's favorite gamelan to play for him outside the window of his jail cell. The boy's father told the trial judge, "He is our best friend, and it was an honor for my son to be in his company. If both are in agreement, why fuss?" Spies was released from prison in September of 1939. While war was breaking out in Europe, he threw himself into the study of insects and marine life, turning out some exquisitely observed gouaches of his specimens. After Germany invaded Holland, the following year, all German citizens living in the Dutch East Indies were arrested. Spies, the last German on Bali, was sent to a prison in Sumatra. There he continued painting and organized an orchestra, which he conducted in performances of music by Rachmaninoff and other European composers. In 1942, fearful of a Japanese attack, the Dutch authorities put their German captives on a ship for transport to Ceylon. The day after it embarked, the vessel was hit by a Japanese bomb. The Dutch crew abandoned the sinking ship, and left their prisoners to drown, slowly and horribly.